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Home > Authors Index > Browse all available works of James Whitcomb Riley > Text of Just To Be Good

A poem by James Whitcomb Riley

Just To Be Good

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Title:     Just To Be Good
Author: James Whitcomb Riley [More Titles by Riley]

Just to be good--
This is enough--enough!
O we who find sin's billows wild and rough,
Do we not feel how more than any gold
Would be the blameless life we led of old
While yet our lips knew but a mother's kiss?
Ah! though we miss
All else but this,
To be good is enough!

It is enough--
Enough--just to be good!
To lift our hearts where they are understood;
To let the thirst for worldly power and place
Go unappeased; to smile back in God's face
With the glad lips our mothers used to kiss.
Ah! though we miss
All else but this,
To be good is enough!



[The end]
James Whitcomb Riley's poem: Just To Be Good

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